Daynara Castillo created and taught a dance and self-empowerment program for homeless students at the Monarch School.
Nelvin C.
Cepeda • U-T

Daynara Castillo has a good ear for music, which serves her well as she pursues her love of salsa dancing. She has a very bad ear for the word “No,” and her inability to hear it is good news for everybody.

She didn’t hear it in her Chula Vista middle school, when the powers that be thought the girl from Mexico City should be in English as a second language classes and the girl thought otherwise. She didn’t hear it when she helped her mother sell language books door-to-door and people were not in the mood to buy.

And she refused to hear it when common sense said there was no way a volunteer could create a salsa program for the homeless students of San Diego’s Monarch School when the students had no dance shoes, the school had no room and no one had any money.

As usual, Castillo thought otherwise.

“I’ve seen how dance transforms adults in my salsa community, and I thought the same thing could be done for children,” said the 37-year-old Castillo, who was working as a real-estate agent at the time. “I thought, ‘Real estate will always be here, but I have to do this now.’ ”

It started in the spring of 2012 with a chance visit to the Monarch School, the downtown K-12 complex that serves children and families struggling with homelessness. Castillo asked if the students would like to learn salsa. The volunteer coordinator said they had been praying for a salsa program. As is often the case with this good-karma magnet, there was more providence where that came from.

A conversation with a man she barely knew led to the donation of 40 pairs of dance shoes. A drop-in visit to Queen Bee’s Art and Cultural Center in North Park resulted in the donation of dance-studio space. And on the day her students tried on their new dance shoes, a few questions led to a whole new adventure.

One student asked if she could also teach them hip-hop. Another one asked for jazz. A third one asked about ballet. So Castillo decided that what the Monarch School really needed — in addition to the after-school salsa lessons that she hadn’t actually started teaching yet — was a summer dance camp. And she was the one who would do it

“Someone asked me, ‘How are you going to do a camp?’ ” Castillo said over tea last week. “I said, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll get it done.’ ”

Getting things done is what Castillo does. Born in Long Island, N.Y., Castillo moved with her single mother to Mexico City when she was 7, where she caught the can-do spirit watching her mom manage a boutique. They moved to Chula Vista five years later, where Castillo convinced the Bonita Vista Middle School administrators to let her study with the English-speaking kids, even though she barely spoke English at the time.

Castillo caught up with English, moved on to Bonita Vista High and then to graphic-design studies at San Diego State University. Eventually, she ended up in real estate, a career she stopped loving when she was moved to the new-home sales pressure cooker. Salsa lessons helped her cope, as did an interest in volunteering that grew in leaps and impressive bounds.